Overdose
by provocative envy
Summary: ONE-SHOT: The year he turned thirteen, he picked up a kitchen knife and fell in love. He relished the stinging caress of polished steel as it sliced through flesh that wasn't his own—he watched blood trickle and smear, dribble and crust, and he thought it was beautiful. He was enthralled. HG/TR.


**Overdose**

_By: Provocative Envy_

###

**Author's Note**: This is a combination Tumblr prompt fill/New Year's present to my loyal readers/super creepy acknowledgement of Tom Riddle's birthday. It's a modern, non-magical AU where Tom is a serial killer with a predilection for knives, and—when she enters the story—Hermione is a young, highly manipulative college student who he chooses as his next victim. The prompt was:

"_Tom as a serial killer and Hermione as his next kill; at least until something about her stops him. Your choice what that is. Bonus points for age difference!"_

I'm going to level with you guys. This fic is fifty shades of fucked up. The style is slightly experimental for me, but doesn't deviate too much from my usual stuff—that said, it's really, **really** dark, which I don't normally do, and there are explicit descriptions of violence. So. That counts as a warning, right?

Anyway.

Happy New Year!

Enjoy.

xoxo

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_**i.**_

The year he turned thirteen, he picked up a kitchen knife and fell in love.

He relished the stinging caress of polished steel as it sliced through flesh that wasn't his own—he watched blood trickle and smear, dribble and crust, and he thought it was beautiful.

He was enthralled.

###

_("What do you see?" he asks his first victim; a girl, kneeling and slightly older than him, shivering in fear as the hem of her school skirt pools around her bruised, scabbed-over knees._

"_I don't—I'm blindfolded," she replies, tremulous; the side of his knife drags down her torso, shredding regulation white linen as it goes._

"_But what do you __**see**__?" he presses._

_She chokes on a sob._

"_Please, I don't—I can't see anything, __**please**__—"_

_He frowns._

_He slits her throat.)_

###

_**ii.**_

The year he turned eighteen, he picked up a switchblade and fell in love.

He savored the hiss and click of the flush-fired aluminum button along its handle—he studied the shallow, agonizing wounds he could inflict with sharp jabs and liquid technique, marveled at how his wrist could snap forward, almost of its own volition, and dig the blade deeper, scraping and grinding and scratching at the bones beneath the skin.

He was entranced.

###

_("What do you see?" he asks his sixth victim; another girl, lying flat on her back and slightly younger than him, abdominal muscles quivering with the effort to hold herself together and not cry out._

"_I'm fucking blindfolded, what do you think I see?" she retorts; the point of his knife gouges the space between her ribs, slithering in like a snake, and she winces._

"_Nothing, then?" he drawls._

_She struggles against her bindings._

"_Fuck you," she spits. "You're fucking crazy, Riddle, I tried to tell Abraxas, tell all of them, but __**no**__, they wouldn't listen, would they, not when you've got them all brainwashed—"_

_He sighs._

_He nicks her femoral artery and lets her bleed.)_

###

_**iii.**_

The year he turned twenty-two, he picked up a surgical scalpel and fell in love.

He reveled in the unique, meticulous shape of the blade, the deadly accuracy that came with its precisely angled edges and sloping porcelain handle—he held his breath as he gently peeled back tissue-thin layers of skin, kept his hand steady as he flayed open pulsing, pastel-colored veins.

He was enchanted.

###

_("What do you see?" he asks his eleventh victim; a boy, curled into a ball on the floor and much, much younger than Tom, shoulders bunched up and arms folded protectively over his stomach._

"_Noth—nothing," the boy stammers; sterile, medical-grade steel dances across the soles of his bare feet, prodding and tickling and painful, and he shudders. _

"_Really?" Tom tries again._

_Tears, salty and sweet, stream down the boy's cheeks._

"_There's—I'm blindfolded, how can I see—how can I see anything?" he whispers, thin frame shaking._

_Tom grits his teeth._

_He's fastidious when he punctures the boy's lungs and clips them into neat red ribbons.) _

###

_**iv.**_

The year he turned twenty-seven, he picked up a tactical one-piece dagger and fell in love.

He enjoyed the heft of it as he slid it out of its black leather sheath, the way the dual-edged, carbon-fiber blade glinted in the dim light of his bedroom—he appreciated that it was a weapon, carefully crafted and expertly engineered, specifically designed to maim and hurt and kill, and he found its brutality appealing, its efficiency close to breathtaking.

He was enraptured.

###

_("What do you see?" he asks his nineteenth victim; yet another girl, sitting straight up in a high-backed chair and ten years his junior, posture stiff and fingers twisting the frayed ends of her prim lace pencil skirt._

_She doesn't answer him._

"_Well?" he demands, using the tip of his knife to pluck at the pearlescent ivory buttons of her blouse; a single drop of blood, shimmering pristine crimson, stains the pale pink fabric. "What do you __**see**__?"_

_She swallows._

"_Death," she says abruptly, lifting her chin, exposing the graceful line of her neck. "I see death."_

_He hesitates._

_He tilts his head to the left._

_He circles the chair, pausing behind her, and notices with some interest that she has gone perfectly still._

_He undoes the knot of her blindfold._

_It falls._

_He moves to stand in front of her._

_She blinks._

"_And now? Now what do you see?" he asks, crouching down to stare into her eyes—wide, brown, pretty, mesmerizing, __**calculating**__—_

_She chews the inside of her mouth; her gaze is intent while it sweeps over him, pervasive and perceptive, and he allows himself a brief moment of vanity when he sees her pupils dilate. _

"_I see power," she tells him, voice clear as it rings through the stale warehouse air._

_He smiles._

_He cuts through the rope around her wrists and learns that her name is Hermione._

###

_**v.**_

The year he turned thirty, he picked up a combat-ready folding bayonet and didn't fall in love.

He was pleased by the range of it, by the fact that he could toss it and throw it and use it from impossibly far away should he ever have the desire to—he adored the long, lean weight of the blade, how it could pierce through grit and gore and gristle with ease; with _finesse_.

However—

Hermione lingered around him, _in_ him, always, _always,_ her taste and her scent and the slow phantom slide of her legs against his, entwined in his sheets, always, and he could not escape it, could not escape _her_, could not mute his untenable, unbelievable craving for the fluttering upward curl of her lips when she gasped out his name, arched her back, bared her throat, _always_—and she was intoxicating, she was _everything_, always, and she kissed him like morphine at night, lulling him to sleep with the lilt of her laughter and the warmth of her body, always, and she was effervescent, a citrus-bright burst of fast-acting amphetamines in the morning, always, and he was enthralled, he was entranced, he was enchanted, he was enraptured, always, and she—_and she_—

She was an addiction.

She was forever.

###

_("What do you see?" he asks his twenty-second victim; a man, collapsed against the far wall and slightly older than Tom, head lolling and expression listless._

"_What do you—I've got a blindfold on, what are you talking about?" the man bleats; the nape of his neck is skewered through the tapered end of a knife, skin pulled taut around the blade, and he flinches when he attempts to lean back._

"_It's a simple question," Tom says. "What—do—you—__**see**__?"_

_The man whimpers._

"_I see—fuck, I can't see anything, I'm sorry, I'm sorry—"_

_Hermione saunters out of the shadows._

"_They're always wrong, aren't they?" she muses, thoughtful. "I wonder why."_

_Tom smirks._

_He severs the man's spinal cord with a swift jerk of his knife.)_

###


End file.
